Creator and Creature: Criminality in Great Expectations and Frankenstein

Abstract

Brynn Staples‘s paper ”Creator and Creature: Criminality in Great Expectations and Frankenstein” is a great example of how those little questions that arise while reading can be followed and turned into  an illuminating and engaging research paper. While reading Great Expectations for my English 2002 (British Literature after 1800) class, Brynn asked about a passage in which the narrator Pip compares his relationship to Magwitch to the relationship between “the imaginary student” and the “misshapen creature he had impiously made” in Frankenstein. Pursuing this comparison as eagerly and reciprocally as Dickens did with Shelley‘s novel, she develops it into a nicely-structured, well-developed  conversation between the two texts. Through her own richly textured analysis and inquiry into the social ethics of creation, Brynn  “continues the discussion” that began almost 200 years ago.

Dr. Judith Thompson